A blog for jon@eaves.org

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After 6 years (and change) of working with REA Group I have decided to resign. It’s mixed sadness and joy, as the place I joined all those years ago, is not the place I’m leaving. That’s good, and that’s also one of the reasons.

I’m moving to a medical genetic interpretation service called myDNA (http://www.mydna.life). In short, people don’t always respond in the same way to medicines, and some of this is because of our genes. In some cases we can look at our genetic structure and give additional advice to doctors about prescribing certain medicine.

I think this is pretty cool, and I’m actually going to be working on things that will make life better for people every day. I’ll also be spending heaps of time working with software development teams directly, pairing with developers and improving their skills. At this stage it looks like I’ll also get to learn C# – which I’m pretty excited about.

One of the things that was important to me was being able to have a balance, and I’ve negotiated that with my new employer. I’ll be working 4 days a week, giving me a day to pursue my own objectives.

I will be;

Focus on providing mentoring/coaching for Women in Technology. From juniors who want to learn to code, to seniors who want assistance with CVs, with conference talk preparation or just general chatting about the state of the industry. I want to help. I want more women in the industry and I want it to thrive. I have 3 amazing women that I’m mentoring now that are happy to provide feedback should anybody be interested.

Cycling. Yeah. A spare day a week to go cycling. Living the dream. I suspect some of this will be consumed in housework. I’ve made a deal with Mike Rowe that I’m going to ride the 3 peaks with him next year – so I’m going to need that extra time.

Consulting. If you’re a corporate, with a lot of money that wants somebody with 30 years of software development experience, team leading experience, AWS experience, privacy/security/cryptography and just general knowledge of the industry to come and give guidance, feel free to contact me and see if we can work out a deal.

From what I can tell, the office small, is open plan (but team sizes, not cattle-yard), and I get my own desk – that I can leave stuff on overnight, and have my monitors and keyboard and chair all set up how I like it. I can have photos of Jo, and George stuck there, and gaze at them when I’m thinking.

I’m unreasonably happy about these little things, but it shows how much those sorts of things count as part of being a human.